Like almost all of life on Earth we have evolved to live in light and sleep in
darkness. Within our bodies there are billions of biological clocks, controlled
by a ‘master clock’ in our brain. Overwhelming evidence indicates that these
biological clocks have a rhythmic effect on our mental and physical processes
that follows a roughly 24-hour cycle. They affect our mood, levels of
concentration, digestion, sleep patterns and much more and are profoundly
important for our health, quality of sleep, and mood. Yet the technologies we
use are ignorant of our biology. Indeed, some of our most impactful technologies including the light bulb, central heating and the computer, can interfere with these biological rhythms – keeping us up later, making us more distracted and enabling us to work against our biology.Continue reading →

The 8th annual Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference took place at Dublin City University, on September 1st and 2nd 2014. Organised by Insight Centre for Data Analytics, the conference featured presentations from NUI Galway, GMIT, UL, UMBC, TSSG, DCU, NUI Manynooth, as well as international speaker from the UK (University of Ulster). Since its inaugural event in 2007, iHCI key event that brings together a broad range of well-established academics (professors, lecturers, researchers, post-docs, research students) as well as industry and practitioners in the HCI domain in Ireland.

The seventh annual Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference took place at Dundalk Institute of Technology, on June 12th and 13th 2013. Organised by CASALA, the conference featured presentations from UCD, TCD, Dundalk IT, IADT, UCC, DCU and CIT, as well as international speakers from the UK and Sweden. Since its inaugural event in 2007, iHCI has been first and foremost the venue for the Irish HCI community to meet and discuss their work “at home” and to create national awareness and visibility for a growing field of research in Irish academia and industry.

2013 marks the seventh year of the annual Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) conference. This year iHCI will take place on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th June at Dundalk Institute of Technology. HCI researchers, students and practitioners are invited to participate. The conference format will include long and short papers from the HCI community as well as a posters and demo section. A new event for the 2013 conference will involve talks by Ireland’s senior HCI researchers –who will present their top-tier HCI conference/journal papers (e.g. from CHI, CSCW, TOCHI, UIST) at iHCI.

This year’s conference will not be organized around a specific theme. Instead, we encourage submissions on novel HCI concepts, insightful surveys of existing work, or concrete, significant, transferable research based on the implementation and evaluation of a working system. Speculative short papers (up to 4 pages) may report work in progress or an interesting idea that is not yet fully developed. The organizers are also seeking an interactive workshop such as the one which accompanied the conference in 2009. More details to follow on this. Continue reading →

Communication, Teamwork, Interaction and Mobility are terms we have come to associate with healthcare work. Communication can be synchronous or asynchronous, coupled and often mediated by multimedia technology. The challenge of co-ordination and supporting co-operation in these work settings is an on-going problem for designers and developers. Co-ordination of information among teams and between institutional settings is critical for efficient and effective healthcare delivery.Continue reading →

Julie Doyle and the staff at the Casala Research Centre will be hosting the 7th Irish HCI conference, with a tentative date of 12-13 June. (Update Dec 2012) Sonja Hermann from the TCD Centre for Bioengineering will be joining them as co-chair. Call to be released soon – watch this space!

The sixth annual Irish Human-Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference took place at NUI Galway on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st June. Organised by the School of Education, NUI Galway, it was the first time that the conference was hosted in the west of Ireland. The theme of iHCI 2012 was ‘Poetics of Design, Narratives of Use’, looking at the broad array of creative methods and tools used to design different technologies for a range of user contexts and application domains, including healthcare, education and mobile work. Highlights of the iHCI 2012 conference included: a keynote lecture ‘Between Film and Digital Media’ by Professor Rod Stoneman, Director of the Huston School of Film and Digital Media; a tour of the National Computer & Communications Museum, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), NUI Galway; and an Alan Turing commemorative lecture. Saturday 23rd June 2012 marked the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, one of the pioneers of modern computing and mathematics. The conference featured presentations and technology showcases from academia and industry, with speakers from UL, GMIT, TCD, DCU, UCC, UCD, Dundalk IT, Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden and NUIG.Continue reading →

An argument for expressive forms of interaction and how they play out in our physical surroundings. The talk will present background and examples from the work at the Digital World and Image Group at Georgia Tech. We combine performance into our interaction design for various technologies, including web, mobile, and physical prototypes. The talk should be of some interest to students in interaction design, digital humanities, and those who look beyond individual technologies for their digital media design.

Mental health difficulties are currently the leading cause of disability in developed countries (WHO metrics). While uptake of technology in the area has been slow, a variety of new technologies to support mental health treatment are emerging. Many of these aim to improve access to treatment and to provide more engaging and relevant treatment to clients. However, technologies which suffer from usability problems or which fail to take into account the real needs of clients and the context in which treatment is provided are unlikely to succeed. In this talk I will discuss the unique challenges posed by this domain and the different ways we can use technology to help. I will explore the issues by presenting our experience of development of an online intervention.

Online mental health interventions can benefit people experiencing a range of psychological difficulties, but attrition is a major problem in real-world deployments. I discuss strategies to reduce attrition, and present SilverCloud, a platform designed to provide more engaging online experiences. I present the results of a practice-based clinical study of an online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy programme for depression. I discuss strategies for design in this area and consider how the quantitative and qualitative results contribute towards our understanding of engagement.